DIY Simple Dollhouse

I used all cheap pine from Home Depot and paints and nails I already had. This project cost me around $20 and took maybe 2 hours total of work.

Materials needed:

(2) 21″ pieces of 1×8

(2) 19″ pieces of 1×4

(3) 19″ pieces of 1×8

(2) 15″ pieces of 1×8

Ability to cut four 45 degree angles on the ends of two boards

Nails/hammer

Paint or other finish (optional)

I bought all my boards at Home Depot and had them do the straight cuts there. I hear that Lowes charges per cut, but Home Depot does it for free. They don’t have the ability to do the 45 degree cuts for the roof pieces though, so I brought those home and instead of using our table saw (since I really only know how to use our scroll saw) I just used our big ol’ belt sander and sanded the edges down until they worked.

The two 15″ pieces of 1×8 are for the roof; the three 19″ pieces of 1×8 are each floor; the two 21″ pieces of 1×8 are the sides; and the two 19″ pieces of 1×4 are the back of the first two floors so the people/dolls don’t fall out. I just used a regular ol’ hammer and nails to piece it all together. If I didn’t hate our screw gun so much I might have screwed it together instead.

After it was assembled, I watered down some regular acrylic paint and brushed it on so it acted like a stain and I could still see the grain and knots in the wood. The colors turned out really bright though so after it dried I rubbed on some furniture repair stain stuff (Restor-A-Finish, specifically) that I had from a previous project and it worked perfectly to dull out the colors so it looks great in our living room now.

Easy project, very fun to do, and a hit with my daughter (it was a Christmas present). Her grandma outfitted it with some Plan Toys classic dollhouse room sets, and I had the Plan Toys dolls ready and waiting too. They compliment it perfectly 🙂

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"We've also evolved the ability to simply "pay it forward": I help you, somebody else will help me. I remember hearing a parable when I was younger, about a father who lifts his young son onto his back to carry him across a flooding river. "When I am older," said the boy to his father, "I will carry you across this river as you now do for me." "No, you won't," said the father stoically. "When you are older you will have your own concerns. All I expect is that one day you will carry your own son across this river as I no do for you." Cultivating this attitude is an important part of Humanism--to realize that life without God can be much more than a series of strict tit-for-tat transactions where you pay me and I pay you back. Learning to pay it forward can add a tremendous sense of meaning and dignity to our lives. Simply put, it feels good to give to others, whether we get back or not."— Greg Epstein

While these archives date back to 2009, this is a compilation of all my previously abandoned blogs. Roughly from June 2009 through July 2011 I wrote in Strings to Things, and from December 2011 through November 2012 I posted to Homestead in the Suburbs. After growing tired of and no longer identifying with these blogs I started yet another ('cause I'm really good at doing that), but this time I've kept the name broad, and also imported all the old posts for posterity.